Lvco Performance Is Adventuresome And Satisfying

The Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, under Donald Spieth, presented a concert last night which was both adventuresome and satisfying -- attributes more musical events should have.

The venue was the auditorium of the Lehigh Consistory of the Scottish Rite Cathedral in Allentown. As a concert hall it was largely satisfactory, with decent acoustics and more than enough seating. The room unfortunately is furnished with inadequate ventilation and became increasingly oppressive as the night progressed.

Now, to the adventure, which occupied the first half of the concert, beginning with a work commissioned by LVCO: Sylvia Gluckman's "The Walls Are Quiet Now."

Gluckman is a product of Juilliard and has been active as a composer for some time. Her commissioned work was inspired, according to the program notes, by a chance encounter with a small Holocaust memorial in Berlin last year, and is meant "to explore the feelings aroused by the Holocaust."

Of course, it's impossible to say whether any new work will stand the test of time. It is possible to say, however, that this piece shows great skill in, and feeling for, orchestration, and a more than usual ability to develop musical ideas in meaningful and interesting ways.

The composer built the work largely on a two-note motif and extensive use of tremolo, producing a rich string and a resonant wind sound. There were occasional dissonances and now and then a hint of Alban Berg, but generally no sonorities to which anyone other than the most reactionary listener could object. In short, it very ably fulfilled the goal of the composer. The LVCO should be proud of this commission.

The second piece presented a startling contrast to the first. Frenchman Etienne-Nicolas Mehul (1763-1817) is not a name familiar to most, or perhaps any, modern concert-goers, to say nothing of his Symphony No. 1 in G Minor.

Mehul has been thoroughly overshadowed by Mozart and Haydn, and it's easy to see why. His symphony presents music which does not begin to approach Haydn's transcendent serenity, or the darker currents of much of Mozart's music.

And yet, there's a place for a composer like Mehul that lies somewhere between unqualified acclaim and oblivion. His symphony, firmly in the classical style, is full of good ideas, skillfully worked out, with occasional touches of more than usual interest, such as the extensive pizzicato in the third movement.

He also suffered from a problem common to composers of the second string: occasionally, as in the second movement, his ideas wore out their welcome before Mehul was willing to put them down. The orchestra played with gusto and style, and only occasional disagreements among the violins as to intonation.

After intermission, as if to show who's really boss among composers, Emanuel Ax appeared to perform Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat major, K. 482. His playing was a model of style, spirit, and insight, and the LVCO joined him with superb accompaniment. It was certainly a pleasure to walk out of the concert hall, breathe the fresh night air and say softly, "This is the way Mozart should be played."